Housing Insulation

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I notice that my noble friend Lord Duncan is watching the performance today. I will certainly not disagree with what he told the House. As I said, there will be a number of upcoming announcements in this field. I cannot at this stage predict what they will be, but I am sure that the noble Lord will be pleased when he hears them.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his new post. Can he share with the House any thinking in the forthcoming White Paper that will ensure that the cost of cutting carbon and retrofitting will not fall unevenly on the poorer people in our society, who are already suffering from fuel poverty and will need all the help they can get?

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. As she will be aware, the ECO scheme is funded from fuel bills. If we increase funding for the ECO scheme for poorer households, that puts up the cost of bills for all customers. That is one of the points we need to address; her point is well made.

Space Science and Technology

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for tabling the debate. As noble Lords know, we circled the moon before we landed on it, and on Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to leave the earth’s orbit. As the astronauts completed their circle of the moon, they saw in front of them an astounding sight: the exquisite blue sphere hanging in the blackness of space. They photographed it and the result was the image known as “Earthrise”. It is without a doubt one of the most profound events in the history of human culture and, without a doubt, an amazing photograph. For the first time we saw ourselves from a distance. Our earth, our home, in its surrounding dark emptiness, seemed not only infinitely beautiful but infinitely fragile and precious.

The photograph graced the cover of James Lovelock’s groundbreaking work Gaia. Lovelock showed us for the first time that everything on earth is connected, and that it is regulated for its own good and thus for our good as well. Rainforests, oceans and the soil beneath our feet ensure that that we have air to breathe, food to eat and natural resources from which to thrive. Initially, Lovelock’s view was pilloried and thought a hippy interpretation of the photograph, but now it is accepted science. “Earthrise” spurred many people to think differently. In 1970, the United States set up the Environment Protection Agency and in 1971 both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were founded. Our own Department of the Environment followed in 1972.

Later in his life, William Anders, the astronaut who took the photograph, said:

“This is the only home we have and yet we're busy shooting at each other, threatening nuclear war and wearing suicide vests”.


It took our leaving the planet to fully understand how awesome and vulnerable it is. Sadly, we are still not learning the lesson. Some 50 years ago, the brilliance of humanity rose to the challenge laid down by President Kennedy when he said that man will go to the moon. We succeeded, triumphantly, so 50 years on, let us put that combined brilliance to work again to save the very precious world that we are all lucky enough to inhabit.

Climate Emergency

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right to stress the importance of taking action domestically, because by doing so we can offer worldwide leadership. I can give an assurance that we will continue to offer that leadership as a result of the very good record we have. That is why we want to host COP26 next year: it will be an opportunity for this country and the whole world to put it to America, and other countries, that they must all play their part in this field.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, without a doubt we have to change the way we farm and the way we eat if we are to avoid this climate emergency. The Government’s new Agriculture Bill might not be perfect but it does go some way towards addressing these issues by setting out what is in the common good: we will cease to subsidise in the way we do at the moment and reward farmers for biodiversity, and for soil and water management. My question is: where is the Bill? When are we going to get it? Given the state we are in, why can we not hurry up?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as to where the Agriculture Bill is, I fear that I cannot help the noble Baroness, but no doubt my noble friend sitting beside me will be able to offer advice in due course. All I can say is that we will do all we can in all fields—there are a great many fields in which work needs to be done—to reduce our carbon footprint. As I have said before, we have done a great deal, but there is a great deal more to do.

Climate

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for introducing this important debate. I agree with her completely that we do indeed have a climate emergency. It is not just a question of moving away from fossil fuels, or of empty slogans. I am thrilled that 44 local authorities have declared this issue to be an emergency. While I was at the Greater London Authority I ran the London Food Board. We declared London to be a hunger-free city and everyone signed up to that with great excitement. However, that was in 2008 and actually there are even more hungry people today, so these must not be empty words.

For any policy in local authorities or indeed in central government to be at all effective, it must not be put in a box. It has to stretch right across, whether it is a question of energy, plastics, the marine environment or whatever it might be. Perhaps I may give an example from the work we did in London. When we think about working an environment strategy into transport, we would probably just consider getting people off the roads, on to bikes and into public transport. However, we have to think a little more: put up living walls by busy road junctions; plant edible green walkways between estates and schools so that children can walk; grow food in parks and plant trees on busy roads; and fund schools, which takes us into the area of education and building. Schools should be given funding to plant gardens. We ran a scheme called Capital Growth through which we created 2,500 new community gardens in the four years leading up to 2012. That cost as little as £250 per garden but in the end we had 180,000 volunteers, and 200 acres of otherwise derelict land in this city became green spaces full of bees and other insects as well as people gardening. It was easy to do, but it is about will and leadership.

The scheme had all sorts of other good benefits, as is the case for a lot of environmental schemes. For instance, the police reported less need for policing in the area. There was a reduction in the rate of depression along with a reduction in the rate of crime. However, to do this, fantastic leadership is needed. Even though I went to work for his predecessor, I am the first to step forward to applaud London Mayor Sadiq Khan for the ULEZ initiative. You need to be tough and you need to be bold. In Singapore—not a state that I am necessarily going to say is a great place to live—when it was realised what was the matter with diesel cars, they were banned from one day to the next. We need that kind of bravery and visionary leadership.

I am thrilled that our metro mayors, just this afternoon, are being afforded greater responsibility over their own transport policies, because then they can start to make a difference. If we can all feel engaged from the ground up, we may be able to make a difference. If we show our politicians that we care about this and that it is indeed an emergency, then maybe it will move out of the box and into the middle of government debate where it affects every single law that we make.